I’d like you to get pumped for the awesome Maciej Jewtuszko vs Curt Warburton face off at 155 lbs. Many of you are pumped for the BJ Penn vs John Fitch fight – rightfully so that will be an awesome brawl – but consider this:
BJ Penn’s dome is a square-ish pumpkin, small. Pretty sweet, but pretty normal. How lame.
Maciej’s cranium, on the other hand, is comical; both in the sense it’s funny (but we would never say anything directly in front of him, due to his fist to face KO of Anthony Njokuani) and straight out of a comic book – this guy’s chrome is a gift from super villiany. It’s like he stole Lex Luthor’s engorged brain only to jam it into skull of malnurished jackal.
Jewtuszko’s head is on a different level.
Fun fact: Maciej’s true power does not come his hard polish background, but from his over-sized nogin.
In class the other day, we played around with the Butterfly sweep/Jean Jacques sweeps. While there are a number of technical details, the one I’ve had emphasized to me is the body posture/structure. If you directly underneath a guy, its tough to lift him – but if you’re to the side a bit, you don’t have to lift his whole weight. I’ve let a chimpanzee draw what I mean.
Pretending you’re the blue dot, preparing to sweep the red triangle, you note that once you’re at the side, you can lift up the corner and topple over your opponent. Obviously there is more going on with the sweep, but we’ve reached my two-dimensional artistic limits; the video below goes over the main talking points for this sweep, including the one we stressed in class: scoot your butt to the side!
We were working on some body locks and positioning last night at the U and we went over this counter to the double leg takedown. In a sense, its not a counter to the double leg takedown because you are still going to the ground. It’s a “make the best of things” type counter. The guy gets in too deep, too fast to sprawl; its too late to stop him for taking you for a ride. Best case scenario is that you get to pick the destination. Video below shows Utah local, Brian Yamasaki teaching the move.
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I remember seeing Dan Henderson use something like this in his fight against Jake Shields. He wasn’t able to roll Jake, but kept his hips from getting sucked underneath and got his legs to the side and then to freedom with his belly down.
So…. Anderson Silva knocks out Vitor Belfort with a front kick to the face. It was beautiful. The timing, the distance the expression on Silva’s face … it almost made me cry. Both for the beauty of the thing, but also because my hope for a new champ got KO’d as well.
The fun thing for me was all the hoopla post fight about the kick. People were going ape-shiz like they have never seen it before, and true, its not a bread and butter thing in the UFC.
This you probably already know. What you may not know, is that Anderson learned this technique from Steven Seagal, or so says Seagal.
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First of all, is it just me, or does Seagal look like “The Eradicator” from the Superman comic books? Because the glasses really sell the look.
As for his remarks about nobody really using it, etc, also like “The Eradicator”, there may be a small amount of fantasy going on.
The way I figure it, is that the teep kick from Muay Thai is close match to this kick, and that’s been around from the dawn of time – and Anderson is *ahem* fairly well versed in that. But hey, now that Seagal has brought the front kick to MMA, perhaps we will also see elbows to the face as well. Maybe even punching of the ribs. Who knows the crazy things is store for us?
Maybe he showed some different pointers or a style of doing it? I don’t know, but it would be awesome to hang out with these guys and find out. I bet its like a rap video, but with hot girls doing ninja stuff instead of clubbing.
I originally learned the front kick in Karate, and one time I accidentally kicked an opponent in the throat in a tournament (I was aiming for the face). It’s a nasty kick. A lot of force is going straight forward, and the structure of the stances with you and your opponent is like a head on collision. The kick is a bit slower and harder to hit with; the movement makes it tricky to adjust mid way through. Unlike a circular kick, which can just keep swinging onward to whack into an opponent, it can be avoided with good head movement. Below, a kung-fu version of the kick.
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The first time I saw the kick in MMA was with Bas Rutten. I remember thinking, “I’m going to have to keep that in my bag of tricks.” I know the resolution on the pics below aren’t amazing, but trust me, it’s Bas. (See video here).
Here’s a video of Rob Mccullough teaching the rear push kick, a variation of the one that KO’d Vitor.
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Anyway, the front kick is something we’ll probably see more of know that attention has been brought to it. Here are just a few more pics to please you.
True fact: Anytime a front kick to the face happens, a leprechaun gets a pot of gold.
We had a really fun training session tonight at the U, and one of the things we drilled was a transition to mount. As I mentioned, the points brought up in training were pretty much the same as the following instruction from BJ Penn. Personally I’m always pumped when we can do something like he does, as BJ’s jujitsu is strong enough to make a man wet his pants at 50 paces.
